Medieval women in elementary school textbooks: Critique and recommendations

Abstract

In this paper we review the ways in which medieval women are presented in educational materials. First we survey the contents of four elementary school textbooks from the main publishers in the Basque Country, where we find an underrepresentation of women, the presence of stereotypes and the absence of topics directly related to women’s history. The originality of such data presented here lies in the fact that they refer to a skewed presentation of women within a single period of history: The Middle Ages. This leads us to reference the main historiographic lines of medievalism and, based on them, to define the desired objectives as regards teaching about medieval women. Based upon these references, we outline a series of teaching proposals to transfer that knowledge to classrooms.